The present invention generally relates to a motor vehicle and the like and more particularly, to a locking arrangement for a rear seat back portion in a motor vehicle in which an interior of a passenger compartment or cabin is arranged to be partitioned from an interior of a trunk room thereof by the rear seat back.
In some motor vehicles, there has been employed an arrangement in which the compartment interior is partitioned from the trunk room interior by the rear seat back portion so that said compartment interior may open into said trunk room interior by forwardly turning down the seat back portion, thereby to make it possible to load or unload baggage with respect to the trunk room also from the interior of the passenger compartment. In the above case, in order to prevent the seat back portion from being undesirably turned down forwardly during running of the motor vehicle, it has been a common practice, as disclosed, for example in Japanese Utility Model Laid-Open Publication Jikkaisho No. 58-78231, to arrange that the seat back portion is maintained at the erected state by providing a striker member and a hook member to be engaged with each other, respectively on the seat back portion and the vehicle body, with a simultaneous provision of an operating member for releasing the engagement between said striker member and hook member.
However, in the motor vehicle having the known arrangement as described above, for example, in the case where a mischievous child enters the trunk room from the passenger compartment by turning down the seat back forwardly, and a driver unaware of it should lock the seat back in the erected state, there will occur a dangerous situation that the child is kept closed in said trunk room. Moreover, there is a possibility that, even when a trunk lid for opening or closing the trunk room from outside has been locked, the baggage within the trunk room is undesirably taken out from the compartment interior side, if a door for the compartment is carelessly left unlocked.